Using Firefox After Eating Turkey

We often like to think about macro level trends in internet behavior, e.g., declines in internet usage on global holidays or growth trends by region. One such phenomenon we’ve noticed in recent years is Cyber Monday. While we have no idea whether internet users actually shop more on the Monday after Thanksgiving, we have seen a surge in Firefox usage on that specific day.

So this year we’d like to put an interesting spin on Cyber Monday and see which reader of this blog can come up with the closest guess for what will be the actual number of active Firefox users on that day. The person who leaves a comment below with the best guess will receive a free Firefox t-shirt.

Before you guess, here are some numbers to work with…

Looking at Firefox usage levels in the days leading up to the 2006 and 2007 Cyber Mondays (average of the following seven days: Monday-Thursday the week prior to Thanksgiving and Monday-Wednesday of Thanksgiving week) and comparing this number with the number of Firefox users on the Monday after Thanksgiving, we saw a 5.2% jump in 2006 and a 7.6% increase in 2007.

Fast forwarding to 2008, the average Firefox usage number we’ve seen in recent days (weekdays only) has been hovering around 72 million active users.

Good luck!

A few notes: (1) please submit your guess before November 30th, 2008, (2) for specific details on how Mozilla determines the number of “active daily users”, please refer here, and (3) void where prohibited by law.

Unfortunately, we suffered some technical issues yesterday, and we don’t have valid data. And unfortunately, this puts a damper on the fun spirit of our little Cyber Monday contest. If any original participant is interested in a t-shirt, please send your mailing address to me at kkovash at mozilla dot com.